Carlos Batts is a photographer known for creepy goth-erotica. American Gothic is his latest epic of psychotic doom-art. It's a  mixed-media cluster-fuck (there's also a hardcover book version, available from Scapegoat Publishing), wherein he distorts  Grant Wood’s classic ma-and-pa-with-pitchfork image into a soul-sucking freakout of mutation and monstrosity. AG is a blood soaked, video/performance-art mind melter of a film that rolls along like every night terror scenario you’ve ever sweated through. Basically, dad kills ma, but it’s much more complicated – and fuckin’ SICK – than that. Think a Marilyn Manson video as directed by a dude that’s been strapped to a bed for 13 years in an attic in Missouri somewhere, with nothing but rotting bird corpses to talk to.

Jesus, Carlos, exactly what are you trying to DO to us with this hellride?

Also included on this freakfilm fest are a series of early shorts. Puppadare (1992) was originally shot on Super 8. Basically, it’s a guy running around in the woods with what looks like a dog’s skeleton, while industrial music grinds away in the background. Also included is the vintage ’92 Film Threat review for the film. I  actually remember reading it at the time, and thinking, “I’ve GOT to see this movie!” Well, Shazam! I finally got my wish. Film Threat was right, it does look like something you might find under a bed in the psycho ward.

Choke (1993) is a much less unsettling piece of work. It’s basically an anti-smoking gag. The third short, Clone (also from 1993) features an angry clown and lots of reading. Art school stuff, basically.

Batts definitely has an eye for bleak, nightmarish imagery, and after spending an hour or so in his world, you’ll be desperate for some sunshine and a friendly face to smile at, because the films he cranks out are truly the stuff bathtub suicides are made of. If you like hanging way out there on the edges of deathtrip culture, than American Gothic is for you.

But really, you should try some Prozac first.

-Sleazegrinder